GOP

[Editor’s Note: This commentary by former Federal Election Commission Chairman, Center for Competitive Politics Chairman and Founder, and Capital University Josiah H. Blackmore/Shirley M. Nault Professor of Law Bradley A. Smith is reprinted here with his permission.]

A libertarian professor friend of mine took the opportunity of Trump’s nomination to write on Facebook:

The fact that the GOP appears to be nominating Trump, and the fact that libertarian-leaning conservative intellectuals in the GOP are (rightly) frothing at the mouth the most about it, only provides more evidence for my long-standing view that libertarian intellectuals who thought their (our?) home was in the GOP were making a very risky “pact with the devil.”

He went on a bit but that gets the mood and core message of the piece.

I was going to write a detailed post comparing the final polling averages of the Super Tuesday primary states with the final election results. Decision Desk HQ is a brilliant grassroots resource for live updated results at a glance, and Real Clear Politics’ polling data is second to none. But then I realized, as we all have at some visceral level this year, that lol nothing matters.

But Rubio won a state! lol nothing matters. But my candidate can unite the party at the convention! lol nothing matters. But Trump dramatically underperformed in several states! lol nothing matters. But thresholds were reached and delegates split, keeping Trump from sweeping! lol nothing matters.

The polling data has been decoded, analyzed, spun, and compared to primary and caucus results in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada to try to justify various candidates’ continued viability in the wake of the Trump juggernaut. It’s beyond apparent that it all amounts to slightly less than Ben Carson’s chance of being elected to anything ever.

As of this writing, Marco Rubio has won a single caucus state (not just tonight - ever), Ted Cruz has added Texas and Oklahoma to his previous Iowa victory, and Donald Trump has won literally everything else. Every debate, every candidate exit, every Twitter campaign, every attack ad, every PAC strategy has failed to slow the budding fascist’s momentum.

One of the media and their Democratic allies’ favorite narratives is the ubiquitous GOP civil war. Every election, every intra-party disagreement, every primary, it’s all they can talk about.

Republicans are in chaos because there isn’t a consensus House Speaker choice. They’re in chaos because there isn’t a consensus presidential nominee. They’re in chaos because there are significant policy disagreements within the ranks. (So weird that “liberals” expect conformity and unanimity…) You’d think the leftist media’s ideological (and, really, partisan) survival would depend on painting the other side as dysfunctional. There are even entire sections devoted to it at Politico, Salon, and Huffington Post. But every year of the “GOP civil war”, Republicans control more state legislatures and pickup more House and Senate seats. And have you seen the Democrats lately?

Plenty of red meat in the news these days, from Hillary Clinton’s homebrewed email server to the US Ambassador to South Korea getting slashed in the face. Taken individually, these stories are just a fun diversion as part of surprisingly full news cycle. Taken together, however, they represent a potential sea change in how government functions — and how citizens and voters are reacting to it. Not surprising that things are changing in the time of NSA data gathering, a newly confident Russia, and the (continued) rise of the brutal Islamic State. So here’s a rundown for those seeking the little glimmers of liberty buried under the chaos.

CPAC happened last week and there was an air of excitement and momentum surrounding the incredibly deep GOP field leading into 2016’s presidential election. Scott Walker has ramped up his game and Jeb Bush tried to make the case that he’s not just the guy the Democrats would love to see make a run. And Rand Paul, as he usually does, won the straw poll largely due to the contingent of young voters who attend the annual gathering. A really great thing in fact because it means the millenials may actually be migrating to the right at a greater clip than anyone knew. But while Rand won the youth, social media and news data says that Scott Walker’s the one to watch…for now:

As Shep Smith and Chris Wallace noted on the Fox News broadcast syndicated to their local affiliates, Obama spent several minutes than previous years after his delivery shaking hands in the chamber. This meant that the GOP response, officially scheduled for 5 minutes after the president leaves the room, would be pushed into local news broadcasts and therefore probably cut off in most television viewing markets. Intentional or not, that didn’t even give Republicans a chance to have their message heard, regardless of how good it may have been.

The reaction to Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s Wall Street Journal column on Middle East interventionism isn’t surprising. Jennifer Rubin at The Washington Postcalled Paul “ignorant” and suggests he could be lying about the arguments for and against. Adriana Cohen at the Boston Heraldcalled him “clueless” and someone who should “wake up to reality.” Pema Levy at Newsweeksays Paul is just trying to copy a page out of President Barack Obama’s 2008 playbook regarding opposition to the Iraq War. The Democrats called Paul’s foreign policy slogan “Blame America. Retreat from the World.”

This isn’t true at all. He told Breitbart.com on August 27 he was in favor of airstrikes against ISIS, but wanted to talk to Congress first. That’s the Constitutional stance because Congress has to approve war.

Texas Governor Rick Perry is hoping to get the indictment against him dismissed. His attorneys filed a 60 page brief on Monday to get the case tossed out, mostly on constitutional grounds. Their arguments are interesting to read because of how thorough they are.

The main argument against the abuse of office charge is on the separation of powers in the Texas Constitution and the fact there is no evidence of wrongdoing on Perry’s part.

These are legitimate points to raise. It is within the governor’s power to veto funds. Here’s what the Texas Constitution says:

If any bill presented to the Governor contains several items of appropriation he may object to one or more of such items, and approve the other portion of the bill. In such case he shall append to the bill, at the time of signing it, a statement of the items to which he objects, and no item so objected to shall take effect. If the Legislature be in session, he shall transmit to the House in which the bill originated a copy of such statement and the items objected to shall be separately considered.

Liberty-minded activists have been saying for what seems forever that the GOP needs to pay attention to winning the youth vote, or die. The fact that the party establishment has been essentially ignoring this voting bloc has been a source of consternation for pundits and political strategists alike. Now, it seems that this message is finally getting through, but it still isn’t being addressed anywhere near as well as it could be yet.

While it’s not realistic to think that they will attempt to launch some sort of outreach program on each and every one of those campuses right away, the honest truth is that if they are taking this seriously, the long-term plan needs to include them. So, that means that officially, the Republicans are prepared to commit approximately $700 per campus for this initiative.

Yes, there are nebulous promises of more money down the road, but we’ve seen this in other outreach programs before. The only concrete numbers available indicate that this is probably going to be a limited experiment by the party, or that this is lip service to grassroots organizers that have been calling for this sort of investment for years.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that Eric Cantor has been defeated in the primaries by a “Tea Party” candidate. While everyone goes through mental gymnastics to figure out exactly why that happened, one thing should definitely be understood - Cantor’s constituents no longer want him to represent them.

Someone needs a reality check, if they think that an incumbent that has just lost a primary is a good candidate to lead an entire political party.

It’s true that alternative media people have been saying that establishment Republicans are tone deaf to the desires of the rank and file voters in the party. Until now, it’s just been a lot of commentaries, that haven’t been backed by anything really measurable.

We finally have something to show that the establishment is not really representing the voters anymore. If Cantor ends up as the RNC chair, rank and file voters need to seriously consider whether or not they want to remain in the party. Talk about a third party gaining relevancy in the U.S. will have meaning if the RNC continues to try to make itself irrelevant.

For many immigrants, the American Dream has always meant living on your means and searching for your own happiness in an unrestrained fashion, like Americans always have been able to do.

While many often agree with that definition, they have started letting skepticism and pessimism bias get the best of them.

Can you blame them?

More than 480,000 people under the age of 25 left the workforce in April while Democrats celebrate the drop in the country’s unemployment rates. About 40 percent of college graduates are unable to find work and at least 29 percent of Millennials choose to stay home and live with their parents.

The results show that Americans are having a hard time agreeing that the American Dream is a possibility, whether they agree with the definition provided in this article or not.

A shocking 63 percent of Millennials, young adults between the ages of 18 and 34, say that the American Dream has become impossible to achieve.

Some experts believe that the pessimism is the result of the harsh financial reality of many low- and middle-income Americans. Also, according to the poll, nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that the next generation will not grow up to be better off than their parents.

The grim outlook could simply mean that this generation is more realistic about their country’s economic reality, but it could also be a reflection of their ultimate disappointment in this administration.

President Obama made it to the White House with the help of Millennials who were simply tired of having their lives being held hostage by big government policies, but Obama is managing to disappoint everyone.